In my “It’s time to walk the walk,”, I wrote about the need for companies to move from talk to action on increasing overall diversity in their IT organizations and their leadership teams. However, the urgency behind this issue is not simply one of fairness and equal opportunity. This is an existential issue for corporations that are fighting to win the War for Talent and to have the right people in the right roles to be competitive today and tomorrow. Simply put: companies that aren’t working effectively to bring more women and minorities into positions of power will be doomed to stagnate because they are artificially limiting their access to talent.